Courtney Milan (11 page)

Was that what he was to her? He couldn’t look at her now, or she’d see how much those words affected him.

She continued. “What is a wife, but a partner who will see you through to your deepest wishes? We have promised each other our deepest wishes.”

“Have we?”

“You will be my protection from the world. And I…” She set her hand on his arm, and a prickle ran up his neck. “Legally, you’re obligated by my actions. Another woman might take advantage. You’ve trusted me not to thwart your ambition. Let me trust you with this, too.”

Yes
.

He couldn’t make his lips form the word. He couldn’t even bring up his hands to touch her.
Instead, he gripped the edge of the seat. “Have no hope of me, darling. I have none to give you.”

“Liar.” Her voice shook, but her hands were steady on his shoulder. And then slowly, ever so slowly, she leaned in to him. She smelled of bergamot and soap, of sunshine and sugar. He was so, so lost.

He met her lips with his own, settled his hands about her waist and drew her in. He held her close—as close as he’d wanted all these past days.

She nestled against him, her lips soft against his. He didn’t want to let go. He could have kissed her forever.

Instead, the carriage door swung open.

“Guv’nor?” It was the driver. “Oh—uh—oh.”

Hugo looked up, his arm full of woman.

“I don’t—this isn’t—” The cabbie was sputtering.

“Calm yourself,” Hugo said. “We’ve just married.” He didn’t meet Serena’s eyes. “Take us to Norwich Court.”

Serena’s hands stilled in unspoken question.

But he couldn’t bring himself to make an answer. Not when he had nothing to offer.

T
HE CARRIAGE PULLED UP OUTSIDE
a bleak, thin row house.

Serena had expected something more sumptuous from the man who was responsible for Clermont’s fortune. But Hugo made no apology for the dark, narrow stair he led her up, nor for the haphazard disarray of the rooms beyond the door that he unlocked. There were two low openings off the main room—so low that Hugo would have to stoop to get through them.

He wasn’t neat. Truthfully, after staying with Freddy, Serena suspected that
nobody
would ever seem neat again. A jacket hung on a chair; a pair of stockings was strewn across the floor.

She peered into one of the neighboring rooms and found stray barrels and a trunk. In the other was a bed—heaped haphazardly in bedclothes and tousled sheets.

Neither of them said a word.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected—that she’d offer herself to him and win him from the duke? That he’d become her husband in truth, cleaving unto her as the words of the wedding ceremony suggested he should?

But there was no cleaving. They felt awkwardly, painfully separate.

Before Serena could lose her nerve, she ducked into his bedchamber. Her heart pounded, but she unbuttoned the pelisse that covered her gown and set it over a chair, then tugged off her gloves. Her hands were shaking by the time she undid the sash on her gown, but still she started to unhook the bodice. It was foolish for her hands to shake—foolish, because she felt no trepidation.

She couldn’t feel trepidation. She wouldn’t let herself. As long as she didn’t look down…

But she looked up from her buttons to see Hugo standing in the doorway, watching her. There was a point, she’d discovered climbing trees as a child, when she reached the end of the branches. When the leaves gave way to sun, and the breeze blew fresh and unhindered upon her face.

For a few seconds when she reached the top, she would feel the finest sense of accomplishment. But that was also the moment when she first looked at the distant ground between her feet. And when she did, what came to mind was not the thrill of victory, but:
Now how am I going to get down?

She’d been outrunning her fears for so long, pushing them away, pretending the ground didn’t exist below her. But now she’d secured her farm and saved her child from bastardy. She’d set everything else aside for later. And now, with nothing left to reach for, later had come.

He didn’t move toward her, but he didn’t have to. The dark recesses of her imagination took hold anyway. He was going to push himself on top of her. His weight would pin her down. She could hear herself breathing overloud; her vision darkened at the edges.

She wasn’t sure where the first tear came from, or the second. She wasn’t the sort of woman to do anything so useless as weep.

But the next thing she knew, she was crying into the orange linen of her wedding gown. And these were no demure, dainty tears; they were great gasping sobs that she couldn’t hold back.

She wasn’t sure when he came to sit next to her on the bed, when his arms went around her. When he started to wipe away her tears.

He didn’t offer useless platitudes, promising that all would be well. He didn’t murmur sweet nothings. He simply held her. It felt as if his warmth enfolded her for hours. When the storm began to fade to hiccoughing sobs, he handed her a clean handkerchief.

“Uncomfortable memories?” he finally asked.

Those. Impossible emotions, too. Guilt. Fear. Anger. All the things that she had put off like so many unpaid bills had returned to hammer on her door, insisting on immediate collection of all amounts owed.

Serena blew her nose. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about me. Just—can you just get on with it?”

“No, sweetheart. I have to be aroused to get on with anything, and I find nothing to desire in laboring over a woman who wishes herself elsewhere.” He touched her nose. She was sure it must have been red. But he didn’t comment on her looks. “Even if she is you,” he said.

“I’m well now.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think this should happen.”

He started to stand, but she set her hand on his arm. “You don’t understand. I only have the one memory of Clermont. I need…” She gulped air. “When I wake up at night, remembering his weight upon me, I want another memory I can hold to, so that I might banish the thought. I need you to drive him out.”

She gathered all her nerve and stood. The bodice of her gown was already undone. All she had to do was slide the sleeves off her shoulders and let the fabric fall. Like that, she was left in corset and chemise.

She had hoped that disrobing would do the trick. But he was not overcome by lust at seeing her in dishabille. He simply walked to her.

He was warm against her, warm and close; he parted her hair briefly and then, pulled a hairpin free.

“We’re not going to be doing this that way, Serena,” he said.

She swallowed. “Which way is
that
way?” Her voice was unsteady.

He removed another hairpin. “Whichever way you’re thinking of right now. Your hands are shaking.”

“What—how—I don’t know—” She choked on her uncertainty, on the dark fears that rose up inside her.

But he kept removing her pins, one by one, scarcely touching her as he did so. Her coiffure tilted alarmingly, and then, as he freed a particularly crucial bit of iron, her hair tumbled down to her shoulders.

“What do you intend?” she asked.

“I am not going to consummate this marriage.” He found one last pin, dangling in her curls, and set this against the others that he’d gathered. He arranged them in his hand, a neat row of gray metal.

“You’re not going to consummate the marriage,” she repeated.

“I’m not.” He held out his hand, and when she reached out to take it, he dumped the hairpins in her palm. “But you are.”

The heat of his body had warmed the pins. While she was staring at them in confusion, he closed her fingers around them.

“This is how it works,” he said. “You may trade a pin for a favor. If you want me to unlace your corset, you can give me a pin. If you want me to give you a kiss, it will cost you a pin. But until you ask, I can’t touch you.”

Serena swallowed.

“Once I have a pin from you,” he said—and this time, he gave her that long, slow smile that she remembered so well—“I can trade it back.”

“For a favor?” Her voice was still shaking. “You could trade a pin for the right to—”

“Ah, yes. You can make me touch you. But I can only make you touch yourself.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

His smile quirked up at one end. “I’m not known for fairness.”

Safe. Safe
. It was coming back, that impulse—slowing her heart, driving her darkest fears from the odd corners of her body. He didn’t move. The dark images that had begun to infest her slowly dissipated. And in their place was…confusion.

Still, she knew where to start.

“Take off your coat.” Her voice shook as she did.

He held out his hand. “A pin, please.” She handed one over. Her fingers brushed his palm as she did.

He undid the buttons down his front and then shrugged out of the dark brown material in one smooth motion. His shirt was white underneath; it clung briefly to muscle as he wrestled his coat to the side. He let it fall to the floor in an untidy mess, and turned to face her in his shirtsleeves. Somehow, taking off that outer layer made him seem bigger than before—perhaps because all that impressive breadth of shoulder was that much closer to her.

Serena’s pulse beat harder, but still he didn’t move.

“Aren’t you going to ask for anything with your pin?” she finally managed.

“No,” he said, with infinite casualness. “I want to build up a store of them first.” He didn’t elaborate, but her breath caught. Not, this time, in trepidation. No; this time she felt the first tendrils of curiosity curling about her.

She pointed a pin at him. “Your waistcoat, then, if you please.”

He complied. She couldn’t see through the linen of his shirt, but she could make out the form of his muscles as he worked—strong, defined curves.

She was growing braver now, and handed him another pin when he finished. “Your shirt.”

Wordlessly, he doffed that. As he pulled the fabric over his head, the muscles of his chest flexed and rippled, and Serena stared. She’d known he was a pugilist—his shoulders
were
broad—but there was nothing quite like seeing the truth of his former profession laid out in the flesh. Those shoulders had tensed when he’d struck another man. He’d taken blows against the hard ridges of his belly. A faint, pink scar traveled in a curving line up from his navel to halfway up his chest; a more ragged red line marked his ribs. There was an entire story written in his skin, and she wanted to learn it all.

He hadn’t said anything as she looked him over, but he was hardly unaware of her perusal.

“Are you flexing your muscles for me?” she asked.

“That,” he said smoothly, “would be vanity.”

She felt herself smile in response—the first smile since she’d entered his room. “So, yes, then.”

He gave her a darkly wicked grin. “Should have known better than to try to bamboozle the governess.”

Serena took a step toward him, and his smile froze. She reached out and touched the point of the pin to his abdomen. His breath stopped. She trailed it up his ribs, and had the pleasure of seeing him break out in gooseflesh.

“I want your shoes.” Her mouth was dry; she could scarcely swallow around the words.

He bent to remove them. As he did, his trousers grew tight around his buttocks, and the muscles in his behind shivered.

So did she. She waited until he straightened before handing him another pin. “Do it again. I want your stockings.”

This time, when he bent, he showed off for her—turning at an angle, flexing precisely
so
. He had to know how his thighs looked with all that wool hugging them. He didn’t say a word, but when he’d discarded the knit wool of his stockings, he met her eyes and winked.

He’d made a game with the pins, one that stole her dread away. Still, she handed him another hairpin. “Do you have enough yet for your nefarious plan?”

“Not quite.” He grinned. “Besides, you’re doing so well on your own. I’d hate to interrupt you.”

Her confidence was coming back. Serena tapped him on the chin with a head of a pin. “For that impertinence, sir, I demand your belt.”

“You demand it, do you?” He set his hands on the buckle, and tightened it. “Then I suppose I am bound to comply.” The tongue of the belt came loose, and then he pulled the belt slowly away. His trousers slipped down his hips a few inches as he did, revealing a dark arrow of hair, dotting down the front of his stomach.

She wanted to know where that trail of coarse hair led.

“Now,” she began, “I want—”

“
Now,”
he interrupted smoothly, “it’s time for me to redeem my pins.” He fixed her with a steady look.

It was only a moment that he looked into her eyes—half a second, scarcely even long enough to blink—but already her pulse jumped in response. His smile broadened. Her skin tingled. She was aware of every inch of her skin—her shift scarcely covered her limbs; her corset bound her breasts tightly. She wasn’t sure if it was fear or arousal that had her so suddenly on edge.

“My first order.” He set a pin in the palm of her hand. “Wait right there until I come back.”

She blinked, but he ducked out of the room before she could gather breath to protest. She took one step forward, before remembering that he’d asked with a pin, and under the rules of the game, she couldn’t follow. But he didn’t return—not for several minutes. She heard the clanking of metal and the working of a bellows—what in God’s name was he doing? Eventually, there was a hiss like steam and his muffled oath.